


Ace of Hearts

by Arazsya



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Awkwardness, F/F, mentoring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 01:46:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18305669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: Sasha hears Azu coming. That, really, is the problem. Part of the problem. One tiny facet of an intricately cut diamond of a problem.





	Ace of Hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Flammenkobold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flammenkobold/gifts).



Sasha hears Azu coming. That, really, is the problem. Part of the problem. One tiny facet of an intricately cut diamond of a problem. One that, like Azu, hasn’t been properly hidden, because the light’s dazzling out of it like a prism, beautiful and _visible_. 

When Azu walks, it’s a clanging, glowing pink announcement to all nearby that the Church of Aphrodite is present. And that’s all very well, sometimes, like when people respect the rule of law. But tentacle monsters and evil cultists and _Barret_ will never see Azu’s bright armour as anything but something easy to take aim at. It’s even worse in these dour grey streets, but Azu doesn’t even seem to notice.

At least Hamid can go invisible now. At least Grizzop’s small and fast and at range.

“Sasha!”

Sasha doesn’t move. Azu’s looked at her – directly, not just a quick glance, skimming over her hiding place – but she didn’t see her, and she won’t. Not unless Sasha does something to let her. She has no plans to. Not yet. Not when her head’s still seething like the sea when they’d crossed it with Zolf.

“Sasha!”

Off in the distance, she can just about make out a faint echo of the call, in what she thinks might be Grizzop’s voice. Nothing from Hamid – he’s probably content to let her come back in her own time, trusts that she will. But the paladins, always trying to make everything better, can never leave well enough alone.

“Sasha!”

There’s a faint streak of blood starting to show through the bandage wrapped around Azu’s shoulder. Even after all of Hamid’s potions, Grizzop’s last lay on hands. Her footsteps are heavier than usual, and the lines on her face make it obvious that she’s in pain. And she _shouldn’t be_.

“Sasha?”

Azu’s eyes are on her face, this time, her voice quieter. Sasha must have moved. She hadn’t meant to. She should have been more aware of it, had better control. Barret would have told her she’d turned sloppy, would’ve made her learn better again. He would’ve been right. She hadn’t been good enough.

“Are you all right?” Azu asks. She peers up at Sasha, squinting, brings up her hand to shade her eyes. Winces.

Sasha sighs. She moves out of the shadow of the streetlamp, off the wall, and pitches herself at the ground with as much force as she can manage her. It catches her, like it always does, but Azu moves to her side, reaching out like she hadn’t, like she’d smashed into it at terminal velocity. Then she seems to think better of it, and lets her arm fall back to her side.

“Fine,” Sasha says, whisking past Azu, turning her back. Barret would tell her she shouldn’t do that either, but if ever she could be confident that someone wasn’t going to stick a dagger in her, it’s now and it’s Azu. And that’s new, and good, and she shouldn’t risk losing it. “Let’s go back to the others.”

“Sasha!”

Azu hasn’t moved. There’s an expression on her face that Sasha thinks means that her arms would be crossed, if it weren’t for the injury.

“What?” Sasha demands. She glances around, trying to make sure she’s not missed some new enemy, just in cast, but there’s nothing – the road stretches away, empty, and there are no faces at any of the remaining windows. Something to fight would have been preferable. Sasha would have been good at it, here – the town’s full of shadows and nooks and they would _never_ see her coming. But Azu must want to talk about what had happened, or about why she’d gone off, and Sasha knows she won’t be good at that. She’d rather take on every single one of the people who’d hurt Azu, alone.

It should have been her in the first place. Azu shouldn’t have been in that position. She hadn’t been right for it at all.

“We need to talk,” Azu says, and Sasha only just manages to stop herself from wishing that Bertie’s lawyers would magic her away again. And maybe she got too close to it anyway, and it’s easier to scan their surroundings for well-dressed gnomes than it is to look at Azu’s face.

“Why would we need to talk?” she asks, the words running into one another. “All that happened was that you nearly died, I don’t know why we’d need to talk about that.” She would keep going, but Azu’s starting to shift like she’s going to try and touch her, so she stops, and they just stand there, Azu watching Sasha and Sasha looking anywhere but at Azu, still hyperaware of her in her peripheral vision.

“I’m fine,” Azu says, eventually, despite the bandage and the blood and Sasha thinks that that stripe of red is a little bolder than it had been. “I am.”

“You nearly died,” Sasha repeats. She doesn’t know what else she can offer, but Azu seems to be waiting for something. “You shouldn’t have done.” She pauses, searches around, struggling to think what else there is. “It shouldn’t have happened like that.”

Azu’s face tightens, just a fraction. “I told you,” she says. “I can’t cheat.”

“Why not?” Sasha’s fingers seem to have picked a dagger out of somewhere. She tests the weight of it without looking. “Everyone else was cheating.”

“That doesn’t mean that I can,” Azu says. She’s starting to sound closed-off again, the same way she had when they’d last talked about it, though that had been before everything had gone wrong.

“But that’s why you lost!” And then there had been knives, because that’s what happens when you lose to that sort of person and don’t pay them what you owe, and she and the others had been close but not close enough. Should have been closer, should have been Sasha playing, but they’d needed her watching the other players, seeing everything they tried to keep hidden.

“It’s _wrong_ ,” Azu says. “That doesn’t change just because everyone’s doing it.”

“It’s just how we play it,” Sasha says. “It’s not wrong, it’s just different. Like part of the game. Everyone knows that’s what’s happening. Maybe not if you were playing with your people, but these are my people, and this is how we do it.”

Azu sighs. She leans back a little, and Sasha hopes it’s not a prelude to her collapsing from blood loss. She has the speed to catch her, she knows, but she’s less sure she has the strength.

“Teach me, then,” she says.

Sasha blinks. Replays Azu’s words in her head. Then again. She can’t have heard right. But Azu doesn’t say anything else, anything contradictory.

“Aphrodite won’t mind?” she asks, eventually.

“Having a skill and using it are two different things,” Azu says, slowly. “And if it makes you feel better, I think she would want me to.”

Sasha considers, and nods, tightly. “Alright,” she says. “I can do that.” Cards should be easy enough, after all. A little bit of sleight of hand, and then maybe, if it ever happens again – which it _won’t_ \- then maybe Azu will be able to hold her own, and the situation won’t descend into stabbings before they’re ready to back her up. “Tomorrow. Once you’ve fixed your shoulder.”

“We should get back to the others then,” she says. “I’m sure we could all do with some rest.”

She doesn’t start moving until Sasha does, and then seems determined to stick close to her. Maybe she’s concerned Sasha might leave again. Sasha eyes the shadows, all the hidden places that she could dart into between Azu’s glances.

She stays.

* * *

It’s harder than Sasha had thought it would be. Azu needs lessons that Sasha doesn’t even remember getting, and doesn’t have the first idea how to give. She tries to show her what she thinks the basics are, and gets her to practice often. And that’s how she first becomes aware of the complications.

They’re at a café when it happens – she’s trying to teach Azu to steal small things off the table, and Hamid and Grizzop are carrying on their own conversation, shooting them the occasional bemused glance. Sasha takes their cutlery when they aren’t paying attention, quickly and without letting the reflected light flash into their eyes, and glances at Azu to make sure she’s seen.

Azu’s certainly looking at her, though she raises an eyebrow when Sasha hands her Hamid’s knife, and gestures for her to put it back.

It clatters, loudly. Hamid pretends not to have noticed, but a few diners on the next table glance over. Sasha controls her wince, and wonders if she should have given her Grizzop’s first. He’s at least on the same side of the table, it should have been easier.

She passes Grizzop’s fork next, but Azu just holds it, looking at Sasha as though she’s waiting for guidance. Sasha blinks, tries to think what Barret would have done, recoils at the idea of that, and thinks about playing with Brock, instead.

She reaches over to adjust Azu’s hold on the fork, and when she looks up, ready to offer an explanation of why, she finds her face very close to Azu’s.

“Uh,” she says. “It’s easier. To do it. Like that.”

“Thank you,” Azu says. Sasha remembers that she can take her hand off Azu’s and does. Leans back until she’s almost tipping herself out of her chair, and pretends she doesn’t see the look that Grizzop shoots her, though she can tell it’s almost as sharp as one of his arrows.

“If they catch you doing it, you lose,” Sasha says. It’s supposed to cover it, but from the way that they all look at her, it’s only attracted more attention.

“I thought you said they would all be cheating too,” Azu says. She seems like she’s listening, though, tucks Grizzop’s fork against her forearm, where he shouldn’t be able to see it.

“They will,” Sasha says. “But you have to pretend you aren’t, or it doesn’t count. It’s… not polite? To do it so people can tell. You’re supposed to do it so well no one notices. If you do see someone doing it you have to react like you didn’t know anyone was cheating.”

“Okay,” Azu says. “So it’s like doing it normally, but everyone’s cheating, and everyone knows everyone’s cheating, but no one will admit it unless someone does it wrong?”

“Yeah,” Sasha says, offers a scratchy smile.

A waiter comes over with their drinks, before she can say anything else, and as he’s setting them down, he glances at Grizzop’s place setting with a frown.

“Did you not have a fork?” he asks.

“Don’t think so,” Grizzop says, and gives him a wild-edged grin.

“I’ll fetch you one,” the waiter says, and hurries off again.

Hamid looks down to inspect his own cutlery, makes a loud humming noise, picks them up, and swaps them over so that they’re in the correct places.

“The table service here seems very shoddy,” he comments, and the volume of it’s a little too careful, a little too modulated, sure to carry to Sasha and Azu but no further.

Azu lights up. She’s clearly trying not to, trying to keep her expression stoic, but the happiness is still creeping at the edges, in the crinkling around her eyes and the curl of her lips.

Sasha lets her chair thump back down onto all four legs, and wishes that she knew how to make Azu’s face do that.

* * *

Sasha keeps her gaze locked on Azu’s, and tries to remind herself that it’s an important exercise, and not an opportunity to study the details of colour in Azu’s eyes. Azu’s trying to keep it steady, too, Sasha thinks, but she keeps glancing downwards, checking what her hands are doing.

Sasha sees her expression twitch slightly, hears the scrape of something metal against the table. She claps a hand down, and catches Azu’s in it, before it’s even got anywhere near the cards that she’s supposed to be taking. She lets go immediately, and Azu sighs, leans back in her seat. For a moment, Sasha expects her to get up and go back downstairs to find the others, but instead she just casts Sasha a long, miserable look.

“Am I getting any better?” she asks. “At all?”

Sasha hesitates, hates how long the silence gets, as she struggles to pick out words that won’t present themselves as easily as other people’s valuables do.

“I’m not,” Azu concludes, quietly.

“It’s not that,” Sasha says. “You’re just starting, and you didn’t grow up doing it. It’ll take you some time. All the things you’re really good at, you had do them for a long time before you got that good at them, didn’t you?”

Azu’s expression doesn’t improve, and Sasha can feel her own threatening to slip.

“You could’ve got anything off Bertie,” she tries. “If he was still here.”

“But not Grizzop,” Azu says. “Or Hamid.”

“Hamid’s played a lot of card games,” Sasha points out. “Not the way I do, but he’s alright at the rest of it. Grizzop’s very quick.” She seizes on it, struggling to offer Azu tangible ways of improving. “You need to be faster. Maybe if you took the armour off?”

“If it turns into a fight, I’ll need it,” Azu says, and Sasha struggles to focus past that, past the thought that if Azu hadn’t been wearing her armour last time it could have gone so much worse, the image of red on pink.

“Maybe we can pad it with something,” she suggests. “It makes too much noise, too.”

“It’s going to attract too much attention, no matter what I do with it,” Azu says. “I don’t think this is going to work, Sasha. I am… not very stealthy. Maybe I should just be the distraction.”

“You weren’t being a distraction before,” Sasha says, and her voice sounds quiet and petulant even to her, and she hates it.

“I don’t think it’s going to happen like that again,” Azu says. It’s probably supposed to be reassuring , but it wavers a little around the middle, and loses any power it might have had.

“Hm,” Sasha says.

The silence lasts. Sasha sits through it, tries to distract herself wondering what Grizzop and Hamid might be up to downstairs, but she can’t get past the fact of Azu sitting opposite her.

“You seemed very upset,” Azu ventures, after a full minute that Sasha had felt every stretched second of. “About last time.”

“Yeah.” Sasha forces a shrug, and fidgets with her cards. “You’re important.” She swallows, trying to moisten her throat. “To the group. The group needs you. If anything happened to you… Hamid would be very sad.”

“Hamid,” Azu says.

“He was very sad when Zolf left.” Sasha hesitates, uncertain, and swirls the three of spades around the table. “And besides, it shouldn’t have happened. You could have died.”

“And that would have upset… Hamid?”

“Yeah.” Sasha turns the three upside down in one fast sweep. “Probably Grizzop too.”

“And you?”

Sasha darts a hand out, trying to snatch one of Azu’s cards. Azu catches her arm without looking. She doesn’t hold particularly tighter, and Sasha knows she could get out of it with ease if she wanted to. For the moment, she stays.

“It… wouldn’t be very good,” she tries. “It’s nice. Having you around. You’re… nice.”

“I _am_ a paladin of Aphrodite,” Azu points out.

“I _have_ met other paladins of Aphrodite,” Sasha says. “They. Um, they aren’t – not that – them. They’re less good.”

“Thank you.” Azu lets go of her, and then holds out one of Sasha’s cards. “I think you dropped this.”

Sasha frowns down at it, trying to remember whether she had or hadn’t. She doesn’t usually drop things. But she doesn’t usually talk about her feelings, either.

“Thanks,” she says, anyway, and starts to collect the deck back together. The noise is familiar, and she lets it calm her. She knows how to do this, she’s _good_ at this, and she’s going to help Azu be too.

“I think you’re important too,” Azu says. “To the group.”

Sasha’s hands miss the next stroke of the shuffle.

* * *

The card sits on Azu’s palm, slightly smaller than it. Ace of hearts, falteringly cut from the deck in their last session, the red and white print still easy to read despite the sparse light in their shared room at the inn. Azu turns her hand, trying to keep the card in it, and one of the corners flops out immediately.

“I don’t think that the way you do it is going to work particularly well,” Azu says, looking down at it, not quite desolate, but still like she's considering giving up. Sasha's chest hitches, with the odd realisation that she doesn't want her to. “People notice me.”

“Then we’ll do it a different way,” Sasha says. “Make them look at something else so they don’t notice. Make more noise with the other hand.” She reaches over to Azu’s hand as she speaks, picking up the playing card, and fitting it in a little better, so that one corner’s against her little finger, and another against the base of her thumb. “You need to tuck that there like that, so they hold it. Turn your hand over?”

Azu does, but the card still shows between the gaps in her fingers. Sasha pushes them together to hide it.

“You need to keep the ends of your fingers together,” she says. “If you do that it won’t show. And relax your thumb. It doesn’t look right if you’re sticking it out like that.”

“It doesn’t look right anyway,” Azu says.

“It’ll get there.” Sasha crooks Azu’s hand a little, trying to take the tension out of her grip, focussed on her task. “And you should practice going round holding it like this, so it stops being uncomfortable. You’ll be able to do more with it than you think, and it’ll all look fine.”

“Hm,” Azu says. Her thumb’s sticking out again. Sasha tucks it back in. “Misdirection.”

“Yeah,” Sasha says. “That’s when you make them look at something, so they don’t see–”

Azu kisses her. It’s a gentle thing, the slightest brush of the lips – Sasha’s had rougher encounters with butterflies – but she still freezes.

“Like that?” Azu asks. She’s smiling, proud, but the expression falters almost instantly. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have–”

“No,” Sasha says, and is amazed that her voice is even audible, even if she’s not sure whether or not she’s actually saying anything worth listening to. “No, that was. Misdirection. Good. You’re. Doing well?”

Azu turns her hand with the card, and places it down very carefully over Sasha’s wrist.

“Are you sure?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Sasha says. “I don’t think that’s. I mean, it’s. Not really what you’re supposed to steal. Normally. They don’t appraise very well. I mean, _I_ appraise it well, but…”

“I don’t think I’m interested in trying to steal one of those from anyone else,” Azu says, and Sasha actually believes her, not just because she’s a paladin, and probably wouldn’t lie about something like this.

“Good,” Sasha says, and struggles to work out what to do with her face. She wants to try a smile, but it feels like if she starts she won’t stop.

“I might need some more lessons.” Azu withdraws her hand, and leans away, watching Sasha like she’s searching for tells.

“Yes.” Sasha glances down towards the ace of hearts, checking it’s still sitting right. “There’s a lot more things.”

“Only if you want to teach me, though.”

“I do.” Sasha reaches out, and corrects Azu’s hand again. She risks a glance at her face, and finds a smile there that she’s sure is fond. She’d have to inspect it a little more to be certain. “So, just, keep that in your hand for a bit? Tell me if you need more help with holding it?”

“I will,” Azu says. She moves her hand out of sight.

“Good.” Sasha watches the table where it used to be, and then looks up at Azu again, lets herself be seen doing it. “You’ve been learning – very well. And the other thing, that was nice. I’d like to – do that again. If you want.”

“Thank you,” Azu says. “So would I.” She stands, and the card stays in place. “I think I’ll go and check on the others. We’ll see if I can stop them seeing it.”

Sasha doesn’t watch her go. She doesn’t need to – the angle of the door is awkward, and when she opens it, one armoured arm scuffs into her breastplate with a loud clank. It falls closed behind her, but Sasha can still just about make out her footsteps, heading off down the hall.

It’s not a problem, Sasha decides. Not this time. It feels like she’s meant to hear it, like she’s the one who’s supposed to be knowing where Azu is, and it turns out, that’s not a feeling she minds.


End file.
